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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Face/Off

Okay, so I had to come up with an avatar for my author page over at the Riptide website. And then it occurred to me that you know what...all of my little pictures for everything should be the same: Goodreads, Twitter, Google, Amazon, the whole shebang. So I ran through the house looking for something cool I could take a photograph of, and I found this:

This is a Venetian mask. I got it years ago in Venice, while backpacking. And even though it's just a paper mask, to me it will always represent something else: the power of positive thinking. Or possibly the power of denial.

"Yes," my sister and I said, "yes we can get these masks through the next eight weeks without crushing them."

I don't know how many of you guys have backpacked, but there's not a lot of room for delicate souvenirs. Particularly if you're already lugging around a Turkish carpet you bought off some guys in Selçuk, and a tiny statue of Priapus that is wholly inappropriate.

But I really, really wanted that mask.

By the time we hit the UK, we had it down to a fine art.

"Got your carpet?"

"Yep."

"Got the masks?"

"Yep."

"Got the posters?"

"Yep."

"Got the gargoyles?"

"Yep."

And since I was the first one coming home, guess who got bring everything back to Australia? I looked like a pack camel. My credit card may have melted when I had to pay fees for extra baggage. I almost had a break down when I woke up in the middle of the flight with my boots jammed on top of the mask bag.

But I did it.

The gargoyles look fantastic in my brother-in-law's bar. The vintage posters in my sister's study are just beautiful. The dog has only vomited once on my Turkish carpet, and my Venetian masks are still hanging on my wall.